copley area cheap eats?

my father travels to boston about once a month for business, and i benefit from a delicious dinner with him. he loves grill 23 or the oak room, but the bill always leaves me feeling guilty. are there other places in the copley area with good food and ambience that will leave us with a smaller bill?

Tapeo is one of my sentimental favorites at Newbury between Fairfield and Gloucester -- Spanish style tapas where a reasonable priced meal can be assembled if you're careful. Not a favorite on this group, but it's always struck me as being pretty close to the tapas that I had in Madrid (though it's also possible that I simply gravitated to the Madrid places that reminded me of Tapeo). <http://www.tapeo.com/>

Parrish Cafe is on Boylston near the corner with Arlington. It's more of a pub-grub type place, with a decent selection of regional and worldwide brews. They do a variety of excellent sandwiches, many purportedly designed by the top chefs of the Boston area (my personal fave is Ming Tsai's Blue Ginger sandwich, basically seared-sushi-tuna on a bun) and all of them very reasonably priced. <http://www.parishcafe.com/>

The other possibility would be to take a stroll into the northern reaches of the South End, where there are options such as B&G, Butcher Shop, Sibling Rivalry and Hammersley's (all within a block of each other near the intersection of Berkeley and Tremont Streets), though some of them start putting you back into the Grill 23/Oak Room price range.

Stephanie's on Newbury (at Exeter) has a large variety of options, and the food is good, if not at the same level as the higher-end places in the area. We used to bring my dad to Casa Romero (Gloucester at Newbury) but I've been scared away lately due to bad reviews on this site. (Btw, our new replacement for Casa Romero is Ole in Cambridge!) Tapeo is good if he'll do tapas-style. Domani might fit the bill as well - interesting Italian near Copley/Huntington. Kashmir (on Newbury) is close by - for Indian.

Parrish Cafe can be a bit too much on the casual side for me. I think the same would go for Croma.